The meaning of this stratagem is to contact countries that are far away, and attack those countries that are close by. This was a sort of diplomatic strategy adopted by the country of Qin during the Period of the Warring States. They used it to reach their objectives of conquering neighboring countries and establishing a unified dynasty. In Go there are only two players, Black and White. So applying this to Go, we can only explain it as: adequately utilize your own advantageous factors (for instance utiliz-ing thickness when attackutiliz-ing your opponent's thin position, etc.) to attack nearby. Fighting from strength will affect the entire board.
Basic Figure: Taken from the 1987 All-China Dan-Level Promotion Tournam-ent. Black to play. Both Black and White have several weak groups on the board. Without a doubt, Black is at an advantage in having the next move. It is certainly not easy to decide how to use this advantage of the move to seize the initiative. The key is knowing where to start.
Diagram 1: At first glance, Black seems to have a thick wall on the left, so Black's
two-space extension at 1, blocking White's solitary stone, is reasonable.
But to play this way, he hasn't considered the whole board. It is just [based on] an instantaneous impression. Black has a hard time accepting the keima of White 2, since it peeps at Black's vital point. In the variation up to tobi at White 6, not only has Black failed to attain his goal of
attacking White, he is faced with the threat of White a on the next move, sealing him in and forcing him to make a bitter life. Clearly he has been defeated.
Diagram 2: Invading White's three-space extension at 1 is a rela-tively ordinary play. White cannot capture this stone. But this is not the urgent play at this point, be-cause thickness in the center, or lack thereof, greatly affects every-thing. White plays tobi at 2, aban-doning ". This is an alert and re-sourceful play. Black makes the largest possible capture of the sin-gle White stone by playing tobi at 3. Now it is important for White to play tsuke at 4 to make shape. Alt-hough he allows Black to cleanly capture the single stone, the price in exchange is to make his own position thoroughly thick. Once White's group is completely set-tled, Black's weakness becomes completely exposed. Black needs to spend one move to connect his center group. White takes the op-portunity to simultaneously make some territory and attack Black.
He has already reached parity in
territory. If he has the chance, he can play tsuke at a, which is very severe (since White is thick outside, he has the advantage). From this result we can see that although Black captured " with ease, gaining sure profit, White was able to build thickness for his big group. Over the whole board, Black's losses will exceed his gain. Black does not succeed this way.
Figure 1 - Actual Game Continuation: The reason Black was defeated in the previous diagram was that he mistakenly judged the left side to be a thick wall and therefore commenced an attack against White's single stone on the side. Actually, the lone stone is not difficult to handle. White's real weakness is in the vicinity of the upper side. Therefore, Black figured he would make his base on the upper left where he was strong. He drew the battle line there.
The keima of Black 1 broke the connection between White's stones in the center and his three-space extension on the upper side. This was a severe move! White would have a hard time taking care of both groups above and below. White used a common response by pressing at 2 and then playing magari at 4. Black's clumsy play at 5 was the strongest move on the board. Its purpose was to prevent White from having any possible sacrifice or other tactics, to force White to run away. The kosumi of White 6 was to be expected. Black continued the attack by peeping at 7 and then tobi at 9. At the same time, he was eyeing the keima at 25. Black had the initiative.
The tsuke at 10 is a commonly-used method for making shape. Playing Black 11 at 14 would be a calm move, whereas in the game he chose to hane at 11 and make a bamboo connection at 13, which was a hurried at-tack. The cut at White 14 seems severe, but actually it has no merit what-soever. This move should have been played at a, awaiting the opportuni-ty to cut. Black coarsely wriggled out with 15 and 17. Under normal cir-cumstances, this would be bad. But this was a special situation. White's cutting point at b was too severe, so he could not extend at 23. Black play-ed hane at the head of three stones with 23. White 14, 16, and 20 all be-came bad moves. After the hane at 23, Black's center was extremely thick,
so White's two-space extension at 24 had become an urgent matter. Black won precious sente and played keima on the upper side with 25. Black was thick all over the board. He had the advantage of not having to worry about any of his groups. Furthermore he had the lead in territory.
Black's winning position was obvious.
Diagram 3: If Black doesn't want to put up with the coarse play of 5 in Figure 1, straddling as here instead, his result would not be good. White would play narabi at 6 and then
cut at 8 in sente. Black must patch at 9 in gote. This way White gets to play first in the center.
Warikomi at 10 develops into ko.
In this ko, White is light and Black is heavy. White can just take some profit somewhere at his leisure, which is not good for Black. From this you can see the importance of forbearance in Go. Although the situation is bad and a little difficult to stand, sometimes you have no choice. This game is the embodiment of that point.
Diagram 4: Even though abandoning the White group in the center would be steady play, in the final analysis letting Black capture it completely would give him too much territory. The variation would probably continue with White making the largest move, a two-space ex-tension at 8. Black would re-inforce with 9, as in an advantageous situation settling yourself is a clear and simple way to play. The kosumi-tsuke of White 10 eyes a defect in the
corner. 11 through 17 are Black's right of sente. After gaining the one-space extension at 19 the corner probably is free of defects. Black has about 75 points over the whole board, whereas White cannot lay claim to even 60 points. The advantage is obvious.
Conclusion: Black made the place where he was thick his base of operat-ions. He developed outward from his base. First he grabbed the initiative for the attack nearby, then slowly widened the battle line to include the entire board. Finally, he controlled the initiative over the whole game.
This is the result of Black's utilization of the stratagem “make friends with distant countries and attack your neighbors”.